The Shape of Information Industries

Date: 28/06/13

Information Industry

Off late dissemination of information has lead to business. Any sort of business is done through the diffusion of information among the mass. Every transaction is related to information. At present this industry is being considered as one of the most important economic sectors. Production and selling of information is happening at large nos. where organizations are minting billions of dollars through this process. Various products related to information dissemination are being sold like hot cakes. For example, movies, various other programs are being heavily invested by big production houses. These products are heavily funded and then they are being exposed to the target audience. Through this cycle the information products are earning money.

Another example is Google. Google as an organization first established themselves technologically. They have all the high end technology which an organization requires to compete with the other market leaders. Also, now when other companies come up with similar plans to establish themselves in the market, they are not able to do so. The reason being Google as a well established company uses its power to maintain dominance over them. This effort can be labelled as "Kronos effect. It states that the efforts undertaken by a dominant company to consume its potential successors in their infancy." It that reference it can be found that over a period of time Google has done many acquisitions where they have bought the patents of new technologies started by some small organizations.

Setting a short term profit helps an organization to win over its rivals. Whenever a new technology comes up, it faces a lot of obstruction from the existing technology prevalent in the market. However, over a period of time, the new technology win.

Creative Destruction

Creative Destruction describes the way in which capitalist economic development arises out of the destruction of some prior economic order.

Disruptive Innovation

A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps to create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network displacing an earlier technology.

Cyber War

Date: 27/06/13

Cyber War: A menace to the society

The article named: "Cyber Wars" published in CJR on 10th November, 2005 talks about the civil unrest in France leading to a cyber war. The link is as follows:

http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/cyber_wars.php

In both New York Times and Washington Post it was published that French bloggers were arrested and the website of a popular radio station Skyrock was shut down. The reason being they were involved in provoking the mass to disrupt the normal lives by spreading violence. Many blogs carried various provoking messages like "Go to the nearest police station and burn it", "All the housing projects should rise. The wait is over. Friday, Nov. 11, a meeting under the Eiffel Tower. At 2 p.m. Show up, it’s important."

It becomes very difficult for the security officials to catch hold of the bloggers but if its required, then the administration will never take any steps back and will go ahead with the decision. Its very difficult to catch a specific blogger in a sea of bloggers, but there are many instances where the administration in France was successful to catch hold of the culprits.

Censorship is very important and is required very much to deal with this kind of cases. So, there should be a proper followup done by the administration to make sure that the laws are strict and people who are spreading non violence should be taken care of.

Indian context

Recently through the spy work China had exploited the secretly kept armed safety related documents from India. It is said that our security systems are not so much upgraded to defend such type of cyber penetration. The number of cyber safety officers under the government system is restricted to  merely 556 but at the same time more than one lakh people are doing the same job for China.

Since 2004 Chinese attacks on other countries including India is purely based on the spy work named Advanced Persistent Thread (APT). APT is a theft of digital documents by sending controlled programmers via email or pen drives.

Till date no such major actions has been taken by Indian government to combat with this issue. Even its contextualized as cyber war, but the repercussions of this war is very effective. It can dismantle the whole Indian population.

Cyber Crime

Date: 25/06/13

Cybercrime and Cyber Laws

Internet privacy

The United States of America is not only the sole country to intrude into the private affairs of cyber users. In countries like India there were several attempts being made by the government to curb expressions on the web showing the slightest of criticism against government. One of the cases where the freedom of expression was being curbed when two girls were arrested for criticizing the declaration of strike owing to the death of Shivsena leader Bal Thackeray.

There have been many reports where it reveals that the Indian Government has requested repeatedly to block several web pages that published contents which were against their interests. The best example in that context was requesting Google to block around 73 websites that published a piece criticising the IIPM, an institution not recognised by the UGC.

Article 19 under IPC states there is a right to free speech and expression. However, there are some limitations also on this freedom of speech and expression. This limitations are being cited as the issues pertaining to national security, its relation with other countries, law and order, morality and a few others.

After India blowed with couple of terrorist attacks the government has ordered interception of about 1300 email ids and phones. The government is authorised to intercept the messages according to the section 5 (2) of the Indian Telegraph act of 1885 for the public safety.

The development of TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol) had brought a see saw change in the development of internet. Also in the later stages with the coming of Hypertext Transfer Protocol web browsing in the PC became popular.

Cyber Law of India

From the below mentioned website, we are able to understand the basic Cyber laws of India.

http://www.cyberlawsindia.net/

Categorization of Cyber crimes in two ways:

The computer as a target: Here a computer is used as a source to attack another computer or network. For example, hacking, virus attacks fall into this category.

The computer as a weapon: Here computer is used for crimes which are much broader in perspective.

For example, all sorts of frauds like credit card frauds, cyber terrorism fall into this category.

Cyber crimes can involve criminal activities that are traditional in nature, such as theft, fraud, forgery, defamation and mischief, all of which are subject to the Indian Penal Code. The abuse of computers has also given birth to a gamut of new age crimes that are addressed by the Information Technology Act, 2000.

History of Internet (contd..)

Date: 22/06/13

Information Superhighway

With reference to the link:

http://besser.tsoa.nyu.edu/howard/Papers/brook-book.html,

we will try to get an understanding on Information Superhighway and the role of internet in making a newer world. During the period of 1994 mass media played a significant role. Mass Media contributed a lot in the dissemination of message or information which brought a new term called Information Superhighway. There was radio, television, newspapers and then internet to spread as much information one could want. 

The Internet vs. Information Superhighway

There are some major differences between the internet and information superhighway. The points which separates them are mentioned below:

Flat fee, Pay per use: On one hand most users on Internet either pay nothing or pay a very minimal amount of charge to the organizations. This minimal amount is compared as low cost flat fee. On the other hand 'Pay per use' affects the user's access habits.

Producers vs. Consumers: In the internet the sender can be a receiver and the receiver can be a sender too. Through Information Superhighway most people will be going through the stage of a consumer where they will face many situations where they have to absorb many information.

Information vs. Entertainment: With the advent of Internet the definition of information and entertainment has changed. Now, both are available instantly. Users can customize their needs. The information which they are looking for or which they don't can be customized in computers in the age of new media. Entertainment also can be chosen according to wish of the user.

Changing access and relationship to culture: Internet has given the cushion of accessing anything at fingertips  Even accessing a specific culture is not far away. With the click of a mouse a person sitting in India can get to know everything about European culture or American culture and many more. Marshall McLuhan's concept of 'Global Village' is becoming true. There is a constant blend in every aspect of life due to internet. Language, culture, ideologies and values of a specific country are all mixing with their counterparts from other countries which brings out a monoculture kind of concept.

When the internet was revolutionized for the first time in the USA, it was very expensive. However, over a period of time with advent of newer technologies at a faster pace, the price was slashed. From America, internet came to European market. However, in Europe it was highly opposed as the Europeans were not ready to accept any American ideology. They started to build their own internet technology and the government of various countries also started to contribute towards the development of internet by providing subsidies to the internet giants.

Some major events happened are:

Tim Berners-Lee came up with the World Wide Web protocol.

Wikipedia was the first website to be launched in Web 2.0

During this time another movement was happening parallely. In 1984 Richard Stolman, an MIT an came up with the concept of free software. It was known as Linux based on the Unix (Shell) platform. It was first of its kind to have user generated code. 

History of Internet (contd..)

Date: 20/06/13

The concept of cyberspace

Let's see what the below mentioned website has to say about cyberspace.

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/cyberspace.html

Cyberspace is used a metaphor to assign the non physical world created by computers. The concept of cyberspace is an extension of the imaginary world. Online systems create an environment where one user can communicate with another through various forms like email, chat, video call and many more. The ideology which cyberspace carries is virtual in contrast to the physical movements happening in the real world. Unlike in real world, where there is movement in a physical space, in cyberspace the movement doesn't require any physical space.

To get a better understanding on cyberspace and virtual world, let's see what philosopher Karl Popper has described in his philosophy coined 'Popper's Three Worlds". Popper had splitted the world in 3 categories and they are as follows:

• World 1: The world of physical objects and events, including biological entities

• World 2: The world of mental objects and events

• World 3: Objective knowledge

So, World 1 and World 2 try to look into two different aspects. The World 2 objects are real but do not have any casual action on World 1. The Third World contains the products of thought.
The term cyberspace has originated with the help of internet, networking and digital media. In that context, there is another important term called Network Gatekeeping which needs to be discussed.


Network Gatekeeping

Let's try to analyze the Networking Gatekeeping Theory from the below mentioned website:

http://schrodingersdog.com/2010/07/01/network-gatekeeping-theory/

It states that Gatekeeping theory was developed by Kurt Lewin in the 1940s. It was later applied in many other fields especially it became very effective in print media. The editor of a specific newspaper has the full control to choose the news for publication over other news. In Network Gatekeeping Theory, the important attributes are:

• Gate: The entrance to or exit from a network.
• Gatekeeping: Process of handling and controlling the information.
• Gatekeeping mechanism: Various tools, technology or methodology are carried out to start gatekeeping mechanism.
• Network Gatekeeper: People, organizations or government has the power to control the dissemination of information in a network. 
• Gated: Entity which is subjected to a gatekeeping process

Copyleft vs. Copyright

Date: 17/06/13

Facebook: Is it under copyright law?

On one hand Copyright is a legal concept giving the creator of an work exclusive rights to it usually for a limited period of time. It gives the copyright holder the right to be credited for work. It also gives the copyright holder the liberty of determining who may adapt the work to other forms, who may perform the work, who may financially benefit from it and other related rights (source: Wikipedia).

On the other hand Copyleft is the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work (source: Wikipedia).

We will now try to look into the copyright perspective of Facebook (FB). The link mentioned below gives us some insights about the usage of copyright in FB.

https://www.facebook.com/help/www/249141925204375

According to FB, copyright law is prevalent in almost all the countries. This law protects the ownership of authors who are writing books, or making music or making a film or creating an art. However, Copyright is not responsible to protect facts and ideas. Again in the USA Copyright does not protect names, titles, slogans, or short phrases.

So, in the above context the ideas or facts when are being posted by an individual on FB, they doesn't fall under copyright law. As ideas or facts don't fall under the law, so the posts on FB also follow the same trend. Another point which needs to be seen that other users of FB has the right to see other people's posts as there is no such law being made where one's posts will be restricted to others.

History of Internet

Date: 15/06/13

'Product of collective intelligence'

Over a period of time there has been a lot of development in internet. The development has come through collective intelligence. The development has happened due to more of a team work rather than of an sheer individual brilliance. At present there are many internet giants and Google is one of them. When we talk about Google, the first thing which comes on our mind is Google search engine. Other than Google search engine there are many other applications which are being developed by Google and are doing really well in the internet market.

Before we talk about the present scenario of Google, let's take a quick trip back to history to know about the emergence of Google and its development over a period of time.

First time 'Google Search' came into the internet world was way back in 1998. In 2005 'Google Earth' came in. In 2007 another attribute of Google Earth was invented and it was the 'Google Street View'. In 2011, 'Google+', a social networking website was being launched (source: Wikipedia).

Some interesting facts:

At present the largest source of income for Google is through selling of smart phones. How? Android is a mobile based operating system and almost all the Samsung smart phones function with it. Samsung mobile phones are the leading mobile seller around the globe. So, it means with an increase sale of Samsung smart phones, there is an income for Google too. It is directly proportional. Again, at present the largest camera seller is Samsung. The reason being in all the Samsung smartphones camera is available.

Sony was the first organization to produce digital camera. The first time when the technology of digital camera came in the other camera manufacturer Kodak rejected the idea of manufacturing digital camera and sticking on to manual cameras. Now, the rest is history as at present Kodak is shut and Sony is competing with other camera manufacturing giants like Canon and Nikon.

Information Seeking World. Citizen Journalism.

Date: 15/06/13

Review of the article 'Fair Game' by Sarah Laskow published in CJR

The article 'Fair Game' by Sarah Laskow was published in Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) on 07th June 2013. It talks about how the reporters and editors look out for information, especially for breaking news. These days reporters and editors look forward to the developments on Facebook (FB) and Twitter for information. The photographs and videos which are shared on the social networking websites often become the main content of their news. However, the strong argument is whether the FB and Twitter pictures content created by someone else be a part of the publication? In that context let's go through an youtube video:

From this video we can find out how a breaking news becomes viral on social networking websites.

So, the point is whenever there is a piece of art created by people which helps the editors or the reporters to get the news, there is always a question of ownership. It’s all been copyrighted and belongs to someone else. In that context Patricia Aufderheide, director of American University’s Centre for Social Media has found a problem. The problem here has lead to release a set of principles in fair use of Journalism.

In New Media age different shops have been set up throughout the internet. The new principles are meant to give journalists a tool to make these decisions based, instead, on the consensus of their professional community. The Centre for Social Media started to conduct research with a point to find out the problem and the effective solution of that problem. They began by interviewing people in the field about how they do the work where copyright concerns might arise. They interviewed 80 journalists. They found people who were very rigorously employing their fair use rights in text and going to the other extreme when using audio for video.

The seven principles are:

1. Fair use applies to the incidental and fortuitous capture of copyright material in journalism.
2. Fair use applies when journalists use copyrighted material as documentation, to validate, prove, support, or document a proposition.
3. The use of textual, visual and other quotations of cultural material for purposes of reporting, criticism, commentary, or discussion constitutes fair use.
4. Fair use applies to illustration in news reporting.
5. Fair use applies to journalistic incorporation of historical material.
6. The use of copyrighted material to promote public discussion and analysis can qualify as fair use.
7. Fair use can apply to the quotation of earlier journalism.

If journalists just follow this set of principles, they might find they have more freedom to gather and share information, in all sorts of forms, than they thought.

We will try to find out the issues related to copyright through another article named 'Daytona crash video tests fair use, copyright for fans and journalists' published in an website called Poynter. The article was written by Al Tompkins. The link to the website is mentioned below:

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/als-morning-meeting/205225/daytona-crash-video-tests-fair-use-copyright-for-fans-and-journalists/

This article states that the fan video on the recent horrifying Daytona crash was removed from YouTube. When the crash happened NASCAR  fans like Tyler Andersen recorded the crash video. Now, in the ticket it was mentioned that NASCAR holds the right of any picture, video and sound created by any fan to be their own. However, journalists especially citizen ones look forward to cover all sorts of events. But the recent NASCAR massacre had put up a new scenario in front of us. The officials of NASCAR claimed that any person recording a video of their event and then uploading on YouTube is a violation of its copyright and that is also a crash where 14 people died. 
So, journalists are still not sure about the fair use of their rights. There are some questions like

1. How many seconds of a copyrighted video can a journalist use in a news story?
2. How many lines of a book can you use without impinging on a copyright?
3. When can you use an image or a logo that you did not create and still be on solid legal ground?

The answers of these questions are pretty much unclear. So, the argument over the copyright is on, whether the photographs taken or video recorded during an event by any journalist is a copyright owned material by the author himself or is it a copyright material owned by the organizers of the event? Over a period of time many journalists have raised concerns over the principles mentioned in the 'Fair Game'. Many are still unclear as to how to take care of the copyright issue. However, in that context its always better to learn every rights before dealing with others.

Non Profit Journalism

Date: 14/06/13

Review of article 'Pew Report: digital nonprofits optimistic' published in CJR

The article 'Pew Report: digital nonprofits optimistic' was published in Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) on 10th June, 2013. It was written by Kira Goldenberg. This article talks about Non Profit Journalism (NPJ) and the optimistic nature of the staffers of a NPJ organization. Pew Research Center, an unbiased organization talks about the issues people are facing. It also talks about the attitudes and the recent changes in trends around the globe which are making some cultural and ideological change in human lives. Before we discuss more about the article on CJR, let's first try to understand the concept of NPJ.

Non Profit Journalism is also called as Not for Profit or Think Tank Journalism. Journalism when shrugs away the attitude of earning money or doing business through news gives the form of NPJ. It concentrates on the issues of the public, thus putting forward the issues in front of the world. The NPJ s are unlike other journalism organizations run through different set of ideologies and philosophies which are not at all related to monetary benefits. The NPJ s carry a value system which has to do something with the dissemination of information for the sake of development. However, as they don't have any earning as such, they have to depend on the private donations.

The article published in CJR talks about Pew as a research organization conducted a research on 172 news organization in the USA. NPJ s like ProPublica and InsideClimateNews has already won Pulitzers for their outstanding contribution in the field of Journalism. Over a period of time most of the NPJ s struggles to sustain due to lack of funds.

Section 501(c) of the United States Internal Revenue Code (IRC) provides exemption from some federal income tax to 28 types of non profit organizations (source: Wikipedia). Most of the times these NPJ try to compared themselves to the Universities or Educational bodies to get tax exemption. Section 501(c)(3) of IRC states that any Religious, Educational, Charitable, Scientific, Literary, Testing for Public Safety, to Foster National or International Amateur Sports Competition, or Prevention of Cruelty to Children or Animals Organizations are exempted from tax. The IRC is being implemented by Internal Revenue Service (IRS). However, NPJ s have to struggle to obtain that designation from the IRS.

Although NPJ s future is dark and bleak, they still take confidence from their deeds. According to a poll by Pew as many as 81% of the NPJ s are confident about their finances, and about their sustainability.

In another article called "NONPROFIT JOURNALISM -- A GROWING BUT FRAGILE PART OF THE U.S. NEWS SYSTEM" by Amy Mitchell, Mark Jurkowitz, Jesse Holcomb, Jodi Enda and Monica Anderson it has been seen that there is some signs of economic health in the NPJ sector. The link for the article is mentioned below:

http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/nonprofit_journalism

This article concentrates on the figures. The figures which are found through the polls and survey conducted by Pew. It states most of the NPJ organizations are small and surviving with minimal employees and with decent budgets. The figure received from the survey states 93 out of 172 organizations are hopeful and going through some positive economic changes.

Principles of New Media#01

Principles of New Media#01

Date: 13/06/13

Every mode of media has its own rules, regulations and principles. Be it Broadcast, Print or New media, every set has its own attributes, identity and ideology. New Media also follows some principles and it strictly follows them. Laws as compared to principles are strict contextual wise, even for new media the principles are not strict and these principles come out of the changes when various cultures around the globe are going through computerization. Through computerization there is a cultural blend which puts forward a new culture altogether. This culture is very much different to the existing cultures in this world as people existing in this culture have some common attributes.

Metalanguage

What is it? A human mind conceptualizes before any action has been done either through speech, gestures or body movements. The concept of Metalanguage comes from here. As we all know metalanguage is used to make statements about statements in another language. So, even a verbal nod comes under Metalanguage. Let me share a link:

http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/literary-criticism/12700085/wordsworth-language-forms-collected-poems-1815

This link mentions an abstract of a research paper related to Wordsworth and the Language of Forms: The Collected "Poems" of 1815 by David Duff. William Wordsworth through his poems has meticulously expressed the metalanguage of various forms. The love for nature is expressed in most of his poems which is a sign of using the concept of metalanguage.

Another link: http://www.vcestudyguides.com/what-is-metalanguage

From this link we get to know that at present the concept of metalanguage is hardly taught. Metalanguage is a language analysis. Metalanguage is used in various literary works to understand various attributes of the work. It is used in novels, films, play and in many other art forms. An author's perception about a particular subject can be understood through analysis and the analysis is boosted by metalanguage. 

Examples:
Novel:

1. Tone
2. Narration
3. Grammar and Punctuation

Play:

1. Stage settings
2. Props
3. Lighting
4. Dialogue/Monologue

Film:

1. Tone
2. Narration
3. Grammar and Punctuation
4. Mise-en-scene
5. Music
6. Lighting

Principles of New Media

Manovich identifies 5 tendencies which are present in the new media objects, which are considered to be the principles of new media.

The details are found on:

http://www.somasa.qub.ac.uk/~prebelo/teaching/amt05/AMT_lecture5.html

1. Numerical Representation

Any object, image or any shape can be described using a mathematical function. In computers any form is coded through binary numbers, namely 0 and 1.
New Media object is subject to algorithmic manipulation. Behind every command used in computers there is a specific algorithm. For example, when an user edits a photograph in a software namely Adobe Lightroom, the commands which are used are based on certain algorithms.

2. Modularity

This principle is also known as 'fractal structure of new media'. It explains about an object's independence in any level of complexity. There are many elements in any new media object. In any program like a sound software ProTools, there are many various elements which together when put together gives the form of a software. For example in ProTools there are sound files, there are many tabs, buttons, commands and many more which are a subset of the main set ProTools.
Another example can be the presence of various elements in an web page. There are various colors, images, videos, animations, links, tabs, buttons and many more but all of them have their separate identities and together makes an web page.

3. Automation

Automation is present in media creation, manipulation and access. Various softwares can be used to manipulate either images or videos on computer. In most of the computer games Artificial Intelligence is used to control characters and various other tasks. Artificial Intelligence uses high level automation in computers to accomplish certain things like manipulation and creation.

4. Variability

Various elements can be used variably to fulfil a certain objective. In comparison to traditional media where elements are fixed to create a main file from which copies are made, in new media various elements can be used variably at different times to make many copies.

5. Transcoding

At present with the advent of new media, media studies is changing to software studies. We create documents, we edit them in software, we upload it through software, we download it through software and much more we can do with the help of software. The concept of Informatics comes from this study. Computer is used as a medium of instruction. At present every alternative object in this world is controlled by computer.
Manovich talks about two modes which is popular in the new media. They are as follows:

• Cultural layer and
• Computer layer

According to Manovich both these entities influence each other. For example, when an audio file is created it is created by following certain algorithms. Next, when this file is being used as music it represents a specific culture. Here culture is the means of distribution of that specific audio file in form of music. In broader context the music represents a specific culture.